Remembering those who died fighting for lies

Dick Feagler is a well known editorialist from the right at the PD. He did not back this war, however. From this column, I can tell he knows he was right. I am a week late posting this, but it positively rocks.

Remembering those who died fighting for lies

11/12/03

The story below this headline said:

"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld welcomed Vietnamese Defense Minister Pham Van Tra to the Pentagon on Monday in the first meeting of U.S. and Vietnamese defense chiefs since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

...edit...
Don't you wonder how that story would have played in the part of vet heaven where 58,000 dead young Americans dwell? Their names are on that black granite wall in Washington.

They died, we now know, for empty rhetoric. Their elders, who sent them into war, warned that if we did not fight the North Vietnamese in Asia, we would have to fight them in the streets of San Francisco.

Old men lied and young men died. And now we see it was all a sham. Add one letter to sham and it becomes shame.

...edit...
We all remember that wonderful photo-op day. The president stood on the flight deck of a carrier in front of a huge banner that read "Mission Accomplished."

Since then, vet heaven has checked in 153 new arrivals. If the banner's message had been true, they would be home now. But they're in heaven, well past all the lies and posturing. They're up there comparing notes with the Vietnam dead about the perfidious politicians who got them there.

Put a banner on a big boat that says "Mission Accomplished" and Fox news and C-SPAN and CNN take pictures of it, and a free political commercial is flashed around the world as a statement of truth. But it wasn't truth. It was just another lie.
Feagler